


Thy Heart O' Flesh

by DoreyG



Category: Stanton & Barling - E.M. Powell
Genre: Casefic - now with more supernatural horror than in canon, Fae & Fairies, Getting Together, M/M, Tam Lin inspired, Urban fantasy casefic based on folklore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28810791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “This is fae country,” Godith said quite simply, again hardly ruffled by his scorn. She simply kept staring at them with a placid expression upon her face, a worrying level of intelligence glinting in her eyes. “The fair folk, the fairies, the unseelie court… Whatever you want to call them, they’re here. Riding through the night, trailing magic and chaos in their wake wherever they choose to go.”
Relationships: Aelred Barling/Hugo Stanton
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Thy Heart O' Flesh

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



As far as witnesses went, Eilaf Metcalfe was one of the least helpful he had ever met.

He was a proper Yorkshire farmer, stubborn and taciturn and seemingly regarding them as interlopers even though he had deliberately summoned them there for the express purpose of helping. He kept a mouthful of farmer’s gum in his mouth all throughout their conversation, and seemed disinclined to answer any of their enquiries with more than a stony “aye” or an equally stony “nay”.

By the time he was gone he was uniquely frustrated, and the only thing that was holding him back from full on anger was Stanton’s angelic smile. “So, what do you think?”

“I think,” he said sourly, still undeniably irritated despite his now customary appreciation of Stanton’s beauty. The other man had become the only one who could soothe him, but that didn’t mean that he had become in any way easy to soothe. “That we should’ve decided to stay overnight at a different village.”

Stanton’s smile grew into a full on grin, lazy and amused. That grin was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, it made him want to contort himself in strange ways just to get a little more of Stanton’s attention. “He was a bit close mouthed, wasn’t he?”

“That’s one way of putting it, Stanton, yes,” he said in a lofty tone, and managed to maintain his stiff necked appearance of disapproval right up until Stanton tilted his head just slightly and gave him those puppy dog eyes that had now dragged him into madness more times than he could count. “An accurate way, I must admit. I’m really not sure what he expects us to do.”

“Oh, but it was so obvious,” Stanton said innocently, with a carefree roll of his eyes that really shouldn’t have made his heart pound extra fast in his chest. “He expects us to return his lost sheep, eternally protect his ravaged fields and then disappear so quickly afterwards that we leave skid marks. It’s all perfectly simple.”

“It’s all perfectly impossible,” he said, crossing his arms huffily over his chest. “I am practiced in the solving of crime, I will admit, but from the limited information he’s provided us with I find myself not even sure this is a crime.”

Stanton edged a little closer to him, nudged him in the side with a mischievous elbow. It was truly astonishing, how such a simple and friendly touch could send heat flaring all the way through him. “What, you think that he looks like the type to get a bit drunk in the middle of the night and do it all himself?”

“Stanton!” He said, a touch scandalised, and stepped back from the brief touch. There was no way of knowing how he would respond to prolonged exposure, whether he would actually go mad and throw himself at Stanton without even a thought to the consequences. “That was not one of the possibilities I was thinking of, no. I was thinking more of the sheep themselves.”

“Oh?” Stanton asked, and put paid to his every attempt to distance himself by giving him an smile. The fact that he had a man such as Stanton in his life was both a pleasure and a curse. A pleasure, because he was the most handsome man that he’d ever met and by far the most amiable too. A curse, because he had started to notice those good looks and that good temperament far more than he should. The crux of the matter was that every time Stanton so much as smiled in his direction he came close to losing his mind, and he genuinely feared that if Stanton treated him kindly for a moment too long he would inevitably end up making a fool of himself.

“Barling?” Stanton had noticed his distraction, although hopefully not the precise reason for it, and was smiling at him fondly. “The sheep?”

“Yes, the sheep,” he murmured, and tried as hard as he could to suppress his blush. Stanton would probably be terribly _kind_ if he knew about what could only be described as his helpless crush, but that would hardly make anything better. “I’m thinking they may not have been taken, but rather escaped themselves. It seems a perfectly viable option: they somehow got separated from the rest of the herd and panicked, they dragged themselves desperately across the fields and left a trail of destruction in their wake…”

“You’re both wrong,” and then a low, firm, female voice interrupted him from behind.

They both turned around in time, he suspected both equally startled, and were faced with the sight of a young woman standing in the centre of the field and staring at them calmly. She was obviously the farmer’s daughter, she had her father’s strong jawline and habit of behaving in the most irritating way possible.

“Excuse me?” He asked, and wasn’t surprised when his voice emerged significantly sharper than he’d intended it to. Between the unexpected interruption, the confusion of the case and his ever growing feelings towards Stanton it was a miracle that he wasn’t yelling at the top of his lungs. “How dare you speak to us in such a fashion. Don’t you know that women of your age should be seen and not-”

Stanton reached out, mid flow, and gently touched his arm in an attempt at restraint. It worked, he was so stunned at Stanton’s hand resting on him that his jaw snapped shut almost automatically. “Which is to say, please could you tell us _why_ we’re both wrong?”

“I wouldn’t feel all that bad about it. My father is wrong too,” the young woman, he dimly remembered her father telling them that she was called Godith, seemed hardly cowed by their interplay. Instead she only took a step forward, glanced between them with what he privately thought was a rather lazy kind of insolence. “It’s not a crime, it’s not simple drunkenness and it’s most certainly not the sheep themselves.”

“Oh?” Stanton said encouragingly, looking genuinely interested. For a moment he felt a crushing sense of guilt at his crush, for surely Stanton hadn’t meant to encourage it; he just behaved that way with everyone, a constant stream of friendly patter that could make a far stronger person than him fall head over heels in love. “What other options could there be?”

Godith - which was as good a name to call her as any - glanced between them again in a thoughtful manner. Strangely enough, it was a look at the sour expression still lingering on his face that seemed to decide her. “How familiar are you with the legends of these parts?”

He finally overcame the dizzying feeling of Stanton’s hand upon his arm at that piece of ridiculousness, in favour of glaring at her instead. “I don’t see what relevance legends could have to this particular situation.”

“Which is to say, not very,” Stanton, ever the diplomat, interceded again with a briefly warning squeeze that sent heat flaring through him yet again.

“This is fae country,” Godith said quite simply, again hardly ruffled by his scorn. She simply kept staring at them with a placid expression upon her face, a worrying level of intelligence glinting in her eyes. “The fair folk, the fairies, the unseelie court… Whatever you want to call them, they’re here. Riding through the night, trailing magic and chaos in their wake wherever they choose to go.”

“Well,” Stanton said eventually, and even he seemed to be having a little trouble in finding an appropriate way through this conversational quagmire. “That certainly sounds…”

“Utterly ridiculous, and borderline blasphemous besides,” he said, in a mood of high irritation, and finally shook off Stanton’s restraining hand. He was done with just standing there and acting reasonable, especially when he kept feeling like he was about to boil out of his skin. “I thought your father’s version of events was hard to stomach, but this is really beyond the pale. Do you really expect us to believe such nonsense?”

“Do I really expect a man like _you_ to believe me? No, of course not,” Godith said. She remained carefully placid, but there was a certain mutinous look in her eyes that he didn’t like one bit. “But your blind belief isn’t really necessary. You can see exactly what I’m talking about if you like, and then you’ll know that what I’m saying is true. Come out here tonight, and hide in that thicket of trees over there. Don’t move or speak or draw attention to yourselves, and I promise you that you’ll see wonders.”

He started to say something cutting, something finely calibrated to have her reeling back and regretting all of her decisions, but somehow it was too late. She sent them both a thin smile, turned on her heel and walked away before he could do more than open his mouth in preparation.

“The _nerve_ of that girl,” he said instead, even more irritated than before in her wake. 

“I don’t know, I thought she seemed rather nice,” Stanton said easily, and a sharp bolt of jealousy went all the way through him; it was bad enough knowing that Stanton was never likely to look seriously in his direction, but even worse to see him flirt with countless scores of women on top of that. “Are we going to watch tonight?”

A part of him wanted to scream at Stanton to _look_ at him, to realize that he didn’t have to chase more skirts when a perfectly willing body was waiting right here, but he squashed it easily. He had learned his lesson long ago, there was no point in humiliating yourself just for the sake of a pretty man. “I’m not sure…”

“It might be sensible to observe, just to see if it _does_ sort anything out,” Stanton said, and sent him a faintly cautious sideways glance. Obviously his attempt at hiding all of his emotions had worked better than he’d ever hoped, for that caution soon grew into another genuine smile. “You know, just to see if it is criminals, drunkenness, sheep _or_ the fae.”

“The fae, _really_ ,” he huffed, but had to admit that Stanton had a point. Maybe the sweet taste of vindication would be just enough to chase the endless, bitter longing for Stanton out of his head for a moment or two. “I suppose it couldn’t do too much harm. Just for a night, you understand.”

“I’ll unpack our winter clothes,” Stanton said, and grinned another one of those irresistible grins. And yet again, despite his best efforts, he found his eyes trailing it for far longer than they should’ve.

\--

Which led, somewhat insanely he privately thought, to the two of them huddled together in the indicated copse that night. Both wrapped tightly in their winter clothes to guard against the Yorkshire night, both still so cold that they had to huddle ever closer together or risk freezing entirely.

Several hours passed without any action, and even he had to privately admit that this was hard and boring work. He liked sitting in one place for a long time, he privately wished that he could do it an awful lot more often, but there was a decided difference between sitting in a nice warm office and sitting amongst some freezing trees with very little hope of succor. He couldn’t even blame Stanton that much, when the man obviously got bored besides him and started humming tunelessly between his teeth.

He couldn’t blame him, but he did feel a certain responsibility to stop him given the limited instructions that they’d been given. He groped out and slapped a hand against Stanton’s knee, was incredibly glad that the darkness hid his blush when he struck out rather higher than intended and got midway up his thigh instead. “Hush!”

Stanton, mercifully or not, didn’t seem to entirely mind the unintended intimacy of his touch. He only grinned, an obvious flash of white through the dark that had his heart pounding just that little bit faster. “Sorry.”

“I am not fond of your pretensions to musical talent at the best of times, Stanton,” he sniffed, trying to sound superior but fearing that he sounded far too fond instead. It was something about that grin, as ever; it made him want to trip head over heels in a futile mission to please Stanton and Stanton alone. “Let alone when we are watching for criminals, sheep or… Potentially other things.”

“Fae, you mean,” Stanton said, almost lazily bursting through his attempt at denial. He had always done that, from the very moment that they’d met. “I really am sorry, Barling, I know I’m not much of a singer _or_ a hummer. At least, not compared to somebody like you.”

“I- I didn’t mean that,” he stuttered over his words, which was hardly a surprise all things considered. Somehow he always seemed to forget how much Stanton knew about him, how much he kept locked away safe in his mind and heart. “And I wouldn’t say that. It has been many years since I’ve sung, I’m probably little better by you at this point.”

He got the impression that Stanton was studying him, even through the dark. And then that impression was confirmed as Stanton slowly reached out, touched his arm with fingers that were gentle but that sent a sear of heat through him nonetheless. “I think you don’t give yourself credit. I bet your voice would still be beautiful, even now after so many years unappreciated.”

He was stunned, even more stunned than the first time - so long ago now - that Richard had shown interest in him. He couldn’t see Stanton’s hand on his arm, it was far too dark, but he still found himself peering down at the pressure of it in a faintly helpless way.

And then Stanton went one further. He waited for a long moment, as if seeing if he’d be stupid enough to shake him off, and then slowly trailed his hand up over his arm and beyond. He didn’t stop until he was cupping his face in one calloused hand, holding him intimately in the way a lover might. “I’d like to hear it someday. To hear you.”

“Hugo,” he said in barely more than a whisper, utterly enchanted by the feeling of skin against skin. “I…”

And then, which was probably a mercy because he had no idea if he would’ve regained his sense and shoved Stanton aside or lost all sense and dragged Stanton’s body over him, he heard the rough thunder of hooves in the distance. He blinked for a moment, utterly startled, and turned his head away from Stanton’s intimate touch just in time to see…

The fae, cresting the hill.

For a moment, if you weren’t sitting in a copse in the middle of the night with the smell of mud thick in your nostrils, you could’ve almost assumed that they were a band of human knights. They rode past them in a perfectly normal manner, all fine horsemen riding finely on fine horses… And then you looked closer. And saw how pale they were, and how they moved sharp and hard like hunting spiders, and the naked hunger on their faces as they glanced around in search of prey.

At the front of them rode what was obviously their queen. She also looked human, from a distance, if a slightly shameless one; her long hair flowed free over her shoulders, she rode astride like a man and her clothes seemed to shine like spiderwebs in the moonlight. And then you looked closer again, and saw the longer fingers forming into clawlike points and the liquid black of her eyes and the expression of utterly inhuman unconcern on her face like she could ride through a field of blood and still be perfectly calm.

And then, in one breathless moment, they were all gone. And in their wake a profound silence swept in, so huge and dark that it oppressed everything in its path.

“... _Huh_ ,” Stanton managed eventually, shakily, as he stared in their wake with terribly wide eyes.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” he said, more nervous than he’d been in a while, and groped up until he could grab Stanton’s hand where it was still resting against his cheek.

\--

“No sheep were taken last night, thankfully,” Stanton informed him. “But when I tried to talk to Metcalfe about the possibility of fae, he just spat into the corner and looked sour. I don’t think he’s likely to believe us.”

It was early the next morning, only a little after the weak autumn dawn. They had both had about three hours of sleep, after staggering away from the copse with their minds awhirl, and were both rather the worse for it. He, personally, wanted to crawl back under the covers and hide his head until the world started to make sense again; a not inconsiderable part of him wanted to attempt to drag Stanton with him, to see if they could forget the world a while together.

“Usually I would agree with his sentiment, if not his way of expressing it,” he said instead, yet again forcibly reminding himself of all the reasons why longing after Stanton was a terrible idea. “But after last night…”

Stanton propped his hip on the fence besides him, somehow making the position look casual instead of the faintly awkward contortion he was stuck with, and glanced across the fields with a pensive expression painted across his face. “We both know better, we’ve both _seen_ differently.”

“You could say that,” he agreed, guardedly, and took advantage of Stanton’s distraction to study the handsome lines of his face for a long moment.

A silence stretched between them, one that would’ve been comfortable if they weren’t both still slightly stunned. He was fundamentally a being of logic and fact, backed up by unassailable holy truth; the thought of actual _fae_ , cavorting across the countryside without a single thought for the church, was deeply foreign to him. Stanton was far more flexible in his thinking, but he got the decided impression that he also wasn’t entirely sure what to do with something so far away from basic humanity.

“So.” Stanton’s voice, when he finally spoke, backed that up. He sounded decidedly uncertain, far less confident than usual. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m not really sure,” he admitted, hating how uncertain his voice emerged. He had the panicked feeling of a rat in a trap, a decided worry circling around and around in his chest that he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with. “I’m used to dealing with criminals, Stanton, not with anything like _this_. It overthrows my entire view of the world.”

Stanton glanced sideways at him at that, and the familiar flash of his cornflower blue eyes hardly served to settle him down any. “I know it’s bad…”

“It’s more than _bad_ , Stanton,” he snapped, his voice emerging more and more shaky by the moment. He hated falling apart in such an obvious way, but he supposed the one mercy was that Stanton would be sure to keep all of his secrets safe. “Until now I have had a very set and very reasonable view of the world, and it most certainly did not include anything like this. I have no earthly idea how to deal with any of this, with the _fae_ for heaven’s sake, and the fact that I foolishly promised to do so means that I now feel rather adrift.”

“Barling.” Stanton had fully turned towards him now, and there was concern spreading over his pretty face. He honestly wasn’t sure what to do with that, somebody that he esteemed so highly genuinely caring for his wellbeing. “It’s okay.”

He sent him a glare, couldn’t quite help himself. Ever since Paris, and all the terrible things that’d happened there, his response to concern was inevitably to prickle like a hedgehog. “ _How_ is this okay?”

“Because we have each other,” Stanton said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and reached out to take his arm in a gentle grip. “I must admit that I’m not entirely sure how to fix this either, but there must be something we can do. What if we go there again tonight, get another look at them and see if they have any weaknesses we can exploit?”

He looked down at Stanton’s hand resting on his arm, reluctantly enchanted by the warmth of it. “You always have been foolishly optimistic, Stanton.”

Stanton, impossibly, smiled at that and stepped closer. He never had been put off by any of his insults, after a certain point had seemed to downright revel in his tartness. It was confusing that somebody so very amiable could like somebody like him, somebody deliberately made of spikes. “You’re the one that made me so.”

They stared at each other a long moment, frozen. The sensible thing would be to shake Stanton’s ever so warm hand off, or even to just step back and pretend that this entire situation hadn’t happened. But instead, shockingly, he found his mouth moving instead before he could even attempt to hold himself back. “I wish that you wouldn’t look at me like that.”

Stanton’s handsome brow wrinkled in a frown, but there was a look of understanding in his eyes. “Like what?”

“Like I’m one of your maidens, to be dangled on your arm and flirted with shamelessly,” he said, and almost gasped at his daring in finally putting this thing between them into words. It felt reckless and wild, and so dangerously sweet that a large part of him wanted to drown in it. “Like I’m somebody special, worthy of being looked at.”

“You’re not one of my maidens, Barling,” Stanton said, and his voice was low and intimate; the kind of voice you used to speak to a lover, the kind of voice that you’d use in bed. “You’re far more important than that.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said; meant to snap, but somehow couldn’t summon such venom with Stanton still looking at him in such a way.

“Whyever not?” Stanton asked, and there was a small smile on his pretty lips now. Like he knew how mad he drove him, like he wanted to drive him even madder still and see where they both ended up. “You’re the most important person in the world to me, Barling, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve been obvious about it. You’ve changed my life positively in pretty much every single way, and you have to know how grateful I am for it. You’re the smartest, noblest, bravest man that I’ve ever met and every single time I look at you I can’t help but admire you. Can’t help but want you…”

The sight of Stanton’s lips curving around the word _want_ were doing strange things to his insides. He took a step closer, almost without thinking, and was gratified when Stanton took a step closer too. He arched up on his toes, Stanton bent down just the slightest bit. Their lips lingered, about an inch from each other and getting steadily closer...

And then, mercifully, the loud baa of a sheep broke the strangely charmed silence between them. He remembered himself, in one savage moment, and immediately jumped back with a harsh gasp. To think, that he had been about five seconds away from throwing himself at his _assistant_ in an open field. Obviously the fae had stolen all of his senses, along with a few sheep.

Stanton, for some reason, looked startled by his abrupt withdrawal. Like he saw absolutely nothing wrong with kissing his male mentor where absolutely anybody could see. “Aelred?”

“Don’t call me that!” He snapped, and suddenly he was furious. How dare Stanton try to kiss him, how dare Stanton flirt so casually, how _dare_ Stanton remind him what it was to want after so very long. “And don’t mock me. I know that you’re feckless, Stanton, but I never thought that you were unkind.”

Stanton looked somewhat hurt at that, like _he_ was the one being wronged in this situation. “I’m not being-”

“ _Don’t_!” He snapped, and only realised that he’d shouted once the word was out of his mouth. He felt on the edge of tears, helpless fury tinged with an undeniable edge of misery. “Stop crossing over lines that I’m perfectly sure you don’t actually want to cross over, stop putting your own foolish desires first, and _stop_ pushing me in a direction that you should full well know is unwise. I have no desire to commit another sin, Stanton, let alone with a man too profoundly stupid to realize the implications of it.”

There was a long moment of stunned silence. Stanton, finally cowed, took a slow step backwards from him and bowed his head. He knew a brief moment of guilt, and that somehow made the whole situation so much worse.

When Stanton looked up again his face was carefully blank, in a way that was doubtlessly supposed to hide his emotions but that only served to highlight how upset he actually was. “So that’s the way it is, then?”

A large part of him cried out for him to immediately apologise for his harsh words, to step back into Stanton’s arms and finally grab happiness with both hands… But he had been unhappy for so very long, he was used to it by now. He swallowed, lifted his chin and forced himself to meet Stanton’s worryingly level gaze. “That’s the way it is.”

“Alright,” Stanton said, more levelly than he’d ever said anything before. “Are we still following my plan tonight, or would you rather we both bury ourselves in happy denial on that subject too?”

“We will follow your plan,” he said, equally level and wondering if Stanton could see how he was equally upset in turn. “But only because I can come up with nothing better.”

“ _Alright_ ,” Stanton repeated, sharply this time, and turned on his heel without a single word or smile more. He walked off without a backwards glance, his shoulders so stiff that he resembled nothing so much as a block of ice slowly making its way across the landscape.

He probably should’ve turned away too, should’ve busied himself with far more important matters than petty emotions, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Instead he leaned back against the fence post again, and watched Stanton march away from him with a strange pain rising up in his chest.

\--

So that night they went to the copse of trees again, and sat there side by side once more. They were extremely close, just as they had been last time, but this time they were very deliberately refusing to touch each other. It was safer that way, far less risk of him forgetting all his sanity and falling head first into Stanton’s arms.

Stanton had been distant with him in the time between their argument in the field, just after the kiss, and when they’d climbed into this copse to wait yet again. It shouldn’t have been a new thing, should’ve reminded him firmly of their early days together when Stanton was still sulking about being given an unwanted assignment, but this time it felt different. He got the impression that Stanton was genuinely hurt, had expressed his feelings in good faith and was now suffering from having them thrown back in his face.

And the fact of the matter was, he genuinely had no idea what to do about that. A large part of him wanted to just forget all his very reasonable objections, turn and throw himself into Stanton’s arms and see where this thing between them could lead. An about equal part wanted to just return to burying his head in the sand, to turning deliberately away from all pleasure because only pain waited at the end. A small part of him wanted to sit Stanton down, and very reasonably explain that he was just protecting both of them from the twin dangers of sin and getting emotionally hurt… And then the tiniest part of him, and yet somehow the loudest, murmured that maybe he wasn’t protecting them from getting hurt at all; maybe he was just being a coward, using the memory of previous pain to warn himself away from anything genuinely good.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t actually process the thunder of hooves, only came back to himself when Stanton drew in a sharp breath and dared to nudge him - with a touch that was barely a touch - in the side. “They’re here.”

He came back to himself only slowly, which really went to show how unwise indulging in this fruitless attraction was. The fae were indeed riding past again, maybe a little closer this time. The queen was most definitely at the front of the pack, directing their movements, and her knights followed her seamlessly and obediently. Watching them left an uncomfortable, hollow feeling in his stomach; like he was being circled by wolves, and with not even a stick to defend himself.

“They don’t even look human, when you get a closer look at them,” Stanton murmured from his side, if possible watching them even more closely than him. He always had had a keen eye, had Stanton; it made him genuinely wonder what on earth the man seemed to see in him.

He swallowed at that thought, well aware that he was running the risk of getting distracted again, and when he spoke his voice was a great deal perter than intended. “They’re not human.”

“I _know_ , Barling, but they’re not even good facsimiles of us,” Stanton said impatiently, the warm ‘Aelred’ from earlier in the day long gone. It hurt, as much as he pretended that he didn’t care at all. “Have you ever seen a spider up close? Really up close, I mean, so you can’t help but look at it.”

He shuddered a little at the thought, or maybe at the chill in Stanton’s usually sunny voice. “Much is the pity.”

“They remind me of that,” Stanton said, sounding genuinely fascinated even though his tone still put him in mind of a block of ice. He watched the fae curiously, watched as they slowly made their way past their hiding place. “Overgrown bugs, looking for something to sweep up in their web and devour.”

The description seemed apt, he had to admit. He studied the fae for a long moment, trying his best to lay his distraction aside and glimpse at least some of what Stanton saw. Last night they had been gone in a blink of an eye, but this night they seemed to be strangely lingering; as if they were waiting for something, or aware of something in a way that sent chills up the back of his neck…

“Can you see any weaknesses?” Stanton asked, slightly impatiently, as he tried to chase the end of that worrying thought.

“I’m not sure,” he said, and pressed his knuckles to his lips as he tried to think the matter through despite all the things trying to drag his attention away. “But…”

The reason why the fae were lingering came to him in one horrible moment, as he noticed the queen’s terribly dark eyes straying ever closer to where they were sitting. He wasn’t sure exactly how well most insects could hear, but he knew very well that most predators had an excellent sense of hearing; the fae could hear their whispered conversation, had sensed prey and were contemplating the prospect of an easy kill.

“Stanton,” he said, so suddenly and sharply that he felt Stanton automatically stiffen at his side. “I think they can hear us.”

“Don’t be silly,” Stanton said, deliberately forcing himself to relax. There was a stabbing feeling in his chest, at the thought that he’d hurt Stanton so badly that the man no longer trusted his judgement. “Nobody has hearing that good, they couldn’t possibly hear us whispering like this from so far away.”

“Then why are they looking over at us?” He asked impatiently, and found himself drawing in a sharp breath as the queen’s eyes - dark as the night, dark as a room without a door, dark as the inside of a coffin - trailed right over to their position and fixed there. He couldn’t help himself, he found himself grabbing automatically for Stanton’s steady arm without even a thought. “Stanton-”

“Maybe if I looked at them from a different angle,” Stanton said over him, sounding desperate, and jerked away from the touch of his hand just as automatically.

He had already been far too tense, and that sudden movement sent him tumbling over the edge. Before his horrified eyes he stumbled backwards; and, in one breathless moment, tumbled out of the copse altogether and onto his back. Showing his vulnerable underbelly to the world, showing his vulnerable underbelly to the fae who were still lingering so very close.

Any hope that he’d been wrong, any hope that they’d ignore Stanton and go after the sheep again, vanished instantly. An almost exultant expression of joy crossed the queen’s face, and then she was wheeling her horse in Stanton’s direction. Stanton only had the chance to prop himself up on his elbows, to open his mouth in the beginning of a helpless gasp… And then the fae were sweeping towards him as one, snatching him up in their midst and carrying him off into the ether.

Leaving him, all alone and shaking in his lonely, cold copse. Knowing full well that he’d just driven away the best thing that’d ever happened to him.

\--

He stumbled back to the farm in a state of complete and utter panic, not sure what to do for perhaps the first time in a decade. He fumbled his way into the farmhouse, probably banging the door far too loudly on the way, and somehow made his way into the little side room that he and Stanton were supposed to be sharing. And once he was there he paced backwards and forwards across the cold stone floor, his breath coming in panicked gasps as he tried desperately to come to terms with what had happened.

Stanton was gone, snatched by the faerie queen between one breath and the next. Stanton was a prisoner, prey taken brutally and ceaselessly. Stanton was in another realm, another place, another life. Stanton was _gone_ , and he wasn’t sure if there was even the slightest chance of getting him back.

And it was all his fault. Dear Jesus, the man he cared for more than any other was _gone_ and it was all his fault.

He didn’t know how long he paced for, it could’ve been seconds or it could’ve been hours, but eventually he heard a strident knock at the door. He stared at it for a long moment, feeling that he was rather beyond speech, but he shouldn’t have worried; when he failed to reply the door swung open without a pause, and revealed Godith Metcalfe standing there and staring at him with a perfectly calm expression.

He made a face at her, and kept pacing. At least she wasn’t her father, but that was an alarmingly low bar to clear. “What do you want?”

“To see why you’re storming around like an entire herd of sheep in a thunderstorm,” Godith said, still seeming remarkably unconcerned by his venom, and leant casually against the doorframe. Her eyes were far darker and less attractive than Stanton’s, but they seemed to see an equal amount as they tracked his progress across the room. “Has something happened?”

“Has something happened? Has something _happened_?” He snapped at her, and then forced himself to take in a deep breath. As much as he’d like to pretend otherwise, taking his frustrations out on Godith was hardly going to make this situation any better. “Yes, you could say that. What has _happened_ is that you were unfortunately right.”

“Well, yes, I often am,” Godith said, with a natural arrogance that would probably get his back up at any other moment. “About the fae, I’m guessing?”

“Yes, about the fae!” He said, and kept pacing. He felt like he was about to shake apart at any moment, like he could just unravel and fade away without Stanton’s steady presence there to ground him. “We saw them, Stanton and me. We observed them for the first time last night, but went back tonight to see if we could gather any actual information.”

“I see,” Godith said. To his surprise she didn’t gloat over the news, didn’t say ‘I told you so’ as she would be well within her rights to do, but rather took a moment to glance around the room in a thoroughly thoughtful manner. “And where is Stanton now?”

He finally stopped pacing at that, came to a trembling halt in the centre of the room. Despair was rising up behind the panic, slowly but steadily, and he was certain that he would drown in it the moment that it broke over him. “They took him.”

Godith finally stopped looking quite so calm at that, stared at him in an openly appalled way instead. “They _what_?”

“Are you deaf, as well as completely socially illiterate?” He snapped, which was unfair but then he hardly felt in the mood to be completely fair at the moment. He wanted to howl at the moon in grief, curse the whole world for taking one more thing away from him, curse _himself_ for shoving that thing away with both hands because he’d been too terrified to reach for it. “We went to the copse of trees you indicated, and watched for them. They came, on cue, and we observed them. They lingered a little longer than they did last night, and Stanton moved to get a better view of them… And he moved too far, or too sharply, and fell out. They were on him in an instant, he was gone in the blink of an eye.”

Godith wasn’t exactly looking panicked, but she was looking thoughtful again. “I see.”

“Do you?” He was starting to unravel, faster by the moment. He hadn’t cried in so very long, had been successfully shoving his emotions in a box and refusing to think about them from the moment Richard had left him, but every single repressed emotion was coming out now. “I’m never going to see him again. He’s probably dead, all because of me.”

“Unless you’re one of the fae that took him, which seems like a remarkably complicated long con if so, I sincerely doubt that it’s because of you at all,” Godith said, for the first time sounding somewhat stern. He got the impression that she was more like him than Stanton, more comfortable with facts than messy human emotions. “From what you’ve said he’s not dead, and he’s also not entirely beyond your reach. If we play our cards right, there might just be a way to get what we both want out of this situation.”

He frowned at her, but it was more thoughtful than genuinely annoyed. It was probably foolish, but at her words a sudden glow of hope had sprung up in his chest. “And what do you want, Godith Metcalfe?”

“The women of my mother’s family have been keeping an eye on this land for a long time, Aelred Barling. When my mother died and my father decided to act like an idiot in the aftermath several old practices were unavoidably laid to the side, and I want most ardently to restore them,” Godith said, perfectly matter of fact, and tilted her chin at him in a somewhat challenging manner. “No need to say what you want, I can already guess.”

“Is it that obvious?” He asked, somewhat sourly, but went on to confirm her impressions anyway. “To get Stanton back, no matter what I have to do to accomplish it.”

“No matter what, huh?” Godith smiled a little at that, a faintly wry one. It also got his back up somewhat, but he was willing to tolerate any amount of annoyance if it led to a solution. “Do you love him?”

“Of course I love him!” He snapped, irritated at how obvious the answer to that question was, and then paused for a second in horror. He had only admitted his attraction to men to two people outside of the priesthood before, one who he’d bedded and one who he trusted beyond all reason, and he felt a certain sense of horror at just blurting the truth out to a woman who was little better than a stranger. “I mean, uh-”

“I’m neither the church or the law in this scenario, Barling, technically both of those are you,” Godith said, with a sniffy disregard for the laws of society that probably should’ve also annoyed him but that instead left him feeling unspeakably relieved. “If you love him then there’s definitely a way to save him. But you’re going to have to trust me, no matter how insane what I’m suggesting sounds.”

He had always hated insanity, had always had a natural repugnance for even the slightest bit of disorder, but Stanton’s life was on the line. He hesitated for a long moment, and then met her eyes levelly. “Tell me what I need to know.”

\--

Which led to him sitting awkwardly in the copse again, his knees drawn up to his chest and his breath coming in faintly panicked gasps as he waited for the fae to arrive again.

A part of him screamed that this was insanity, that he had no business facing unholy forces all for a bond that was sinful in one of the worst ways possible. But the far larger part of him was resolute, if admittedly terrified. He had told Godith the truth, he really was in love with Stanton and had been for some time; and love, true love, deserved courage instead of the mealy mouthed fear he had been treating it with up to now.

He was so lost in his new sense of resoluteness, his new conviction that he was doing absolutely the right thing, that he almost missed the thunder of hooves. Almost. As it was the moment he heard the slightest thud he unwrapped his arms from where they had been clenched around his knees and went up into a crouch so he could better see.

Their progression was much the same as it had been last night, with a few key differences. The queen was at the forefront again, leading her hunt with a savage expression of exaltation on her face. Her knights trailed obediently behind her, all stone faced but fluid bodied on the backs of their mounts. And then, at the very rear and suspiciously unguarded, came his Stanton; on the back of a pure white horse, with a dazed expression on his face as if he wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

He waited one moment, as the queen went by. And then another two, as most of her knights trailed after her. And then, the moment that Stanton’s horse thundered by, he leapt out of his hiding spot - with a turn of speed that he’d never managed before - and grabbed Stanton’s leg just over the knee. He tugged as hard as he could, cursing his lack of strength, and was both surprised and overjoyed when Stanton swayed for a moment and then toppled off the side of his steed and down into his arms.

He was knocked to his knees by the impact, but in that moment he couldn’t particularly bring himself to care. Stanton was limp and lolling in his arms, but he was still _Stanton_. He buried his mouth in those golden curls, long admired but always avoided, and let out a desperate sob of relief as he clutched him close.

A sob of relief that soon turned into a hasty gasp when, after but only a moment of warmth, Stanton’s entire body chilled and he turned into a block of ice. Godith had warned him of this, had told him very firmly that he could not expect to win his love back without some struggle, but it was still a shock to feel warm flesh turn to the icy cool of a pond in winter. He refused to jerk back or cry out or otherwise abandon Stanton, though; instead he only tightened his arms again, took in a deep and shuddering breath and reminded himself that this couldn’t possibly hurt him.

He had the ice in his arms for a moment, a rather chilly but not actually harmful moment, and then whatever fates governed this process obviously realized that such a tactic wouldn’t work and changed again. This time he had a roaring flame in his arms, so hot that sweat immediately started to glisten over his scalp and so fierce that he couldn’t quite hold back a squeak of shock. He still didn’t let go, though; he just reminded himself that Stanton had always run warm, that he had always found that secretly charming, and proceeded to hold on all the tighter.

Sensing that he wasn’t afraid yet again, or at least wasn’t afraid enough to actually let Stanton go, the universe shifted once more. Until he was holding an adder in his arms, one that was rearing back for an angry strike. He _hated_ snakes, and equally hated the thought of being under attack, but yet again he reminded himself of the need for courage. He tightened his grip so he was properly holding the adder, looked down at it with determination and not a little scorn. It was terrifying, but nobody and nothing could attack him more fearsomely than he’d already attacked himself.

Seeing that fear of attack wouldn’t work, not with the force of love driving him onwards, the strange fae force decided to try yet another tactic. Within moments Stanton was no longer an adder in his hands, but rather a frantically fluttering dove trying to desperately get away from him. As if he couldn’t stand his presence, as if he was just like Richard so very long ago. That, even more than the vision of an adder attacking, sent a surge of sick fear through him… But he withstood it, and gently tightened his fingers around the dove until he was holding it gently but firmly. He was tired of letting happiness get away from him, tired of believing that it would inevitably leave him each and every time.

There was a throb through the universe at that, a sense of what could only be described as desperation, and then Stanton shifted another time; until his hands were closed not around the body of a dove, but the neck of a swan. For a moment he flinched, albeit while still holding on, in fear of yet another attack. But the swan didn’t go for his throat or attempt to break his arms with its wings, rather just hung there and gave him an almost contemptuous glance; as if to remind him that he wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough, would never be even the slightest bit worthy of experiencing the glory of a man like Stanton. It was the most depressing sight of all, one that kindled a familiar despair in his chest and made his eyes prickle with tears… But yet again, he forced himself to withstand it. Maybe he wasn’t worthy, maybe he was; whatever the truth was, he was _determined_ to keep Stanton nonetheless.

The swan, both Stanton and not Stanton all at once, let out a screech of muffled fury at his refusal to back down. And then turned one last time, shifted in his hands until he was not clutching ice or fire or an adder or a dove or even a swan… But rather a simple coal, much like you’d find in any fire across the land. None of the others had truly hurt him, his own mind had done all the work for them, but this coal _did_ burn; he could feel it searing his hands, cutting into him in a way that made the air catch in his throat.

He could tolerate simple physical pain, it was as nothing compared to the torments his mind had inflicted upon him every day up until now. He staggered towards a nearby pool, one used to water the sheep, and spared a brief thought of apology to Stanton before finally loosening his grip and dropping the coal right into the dark, cold depths.

For a long moment there was nothing, just the slight rustle of the fae paused behind him and probably watching this entire process. He ignored them as best he could, a fear for another moment, and sunk to his knees besides the water instead. This had to work, it _had_ to. Please, God, let him have just this one thing…

And then, as if his prayers had _finally_ been answered after over a decade of drought, the waters parted and Stanton emerged gasping and wide eyed. He bobbed there in the water for a moment, looking decidedly confused, and then he spotted him and his gaze immediately sharpened. He waded for the side, the water parting first to reveal his bare collarbone and then his bare chest and then even lower. The moment he was close enough, with a sense of some regret for he had been fascinated by the thought of a naked Stanton for some time now, he removed his robe - glad that he’d followed Godith’s instructions to wear sturdy clothes underneath it - and tossed it warmly around Stanton’s bare shoulders.

“Aelred,” Stanton said quite simply. He was still obviously confused, but when the robe wrapped around him he didn’t protest but rather reached up one hand to clutch in its warm folds. “What…?”

“It’s alright,” he said, almost weeping with relief, and finally gave in to what he had wanted to do for so very long; he reached out, and wrapped his arms around Stanton’s warm waist, and held on as tightly as he possibly could. “I’ve got you, Hugo. You’re safe, and I’ve got you, and everything is going to be okay…”

And then, as if to remind him that more stood in his way than his own foolish regrets, he heard the pointed clearing of a throat from behind him.

He turned, keeping Stanton automatically behind him and shielded from anybody else’s gaze, to see the fae queen glaring at him and her knights standing unimpressed behind. Stanton had been right in his initial assessment, close up there was very little human in her; her face was nightmarishly pale, her teeth were long enough that they jutted out of her mouth into fangs and what he had taken for the affectation of beauty spots was instead two smaller eyes dotted just beneath her main pair. She was terrifying, and it took some effort to hold his ground. 

“ _You_ ,” the queen said in a strange hiss, her accent a strange mixture of Scottish, Irish and Welsh; a wild accent, that scraped against the senses and reminded him of ancient things. “Have just stolen _my_ pet.”

“He’s not a pet,” he said, and was surprised when his voice emerged steady. Suddenly he was done being a coward, done pretending that he didn’t want to fight for Stanton with everything he had in him; he spread his arms out defensively, glared at her as fiercely as he could. “And he’s not yours, and never was. He’s _mine_.”

The queen swelled a little with rage. In that she looked like a spider too, one preparing to pounce on a fly who had unwisely strayed into her web. “How _dare_ -”

“He has obeyed the rules fair and square, your highness,” a blunt voice interrupted their face off. And, in a move that had been previously agreed but that still left him weak kneed with relief, Godith emerged from seemingly nowhere and walked into the queen’s line of sight without any fear at all. “You caught the boy, yes, but this man stole him back just as surely and passed the trials to keep him in his arms. You no longer have any claim on him.”

“I could take him anyway,” the queen said sourly, flickering half her eyes over to give Godith a searing look. She seemed unaware of her knights shifting uncomfortably behind her, or simply unconcerned by their distress. “As Queen-”

“There are certain rules that you have to obey, or risk disaster for both the realms you straddle,” Godith said, and for the first time there was a note of iron in her voice. “You have already been allowed to flout far too many of them. Do you really, even as queen, wish to push your luck any further?”

There was a long moment of angry silence, and then the queen let out a long and hissing breath. “Who are you, girl?”

“I am Godith Metcale, daughter of Alisoun Metcalfe nee Sykes,” Godith said, her tone that of a conquering soldier, and took another step forwards with her chin up and her eyes blazing. “And I have come to renew the old treaties. You leave this land be, and in return I and my descendants will continue to till this soil with our blood.”

The queen hesitated for a long moment, but seemed nowhere near as implacable as before. Her second set of eyes tracked slowly sideways towards him, and then to behind him where Stanton was still standing naked besides his robes wrapped around him. He probably should’ve remained frozen, terrified by the entire situation, but he couldn’t help himself; at her attention towards Stanton he found himself baring his teeth, glaring at her in a savage challenge yet again.

“Do you accept?” Godith interrupted yet again, the briefest twitch of a smile on her lips as she watched the interplay between them. “Your highness?”

“Very well,” the queen said abruptly, her eyes still lingering briefly on his face, and turned away in one sharp movement. She turned her horse with her, the beast remarkably docile considering what it had to bear, and gestured for her knights to follow her with one sharp wave of her hand. “Come, hunt, let us find different pastures to ride in at night.”

And then, impossibly and wonderfully, they all left. Thundered off across the fields into the fog, and disappeared between one blink and the next.

A long moment of silence followed their departure, all of them catching their breaths, and then Stanton gave a soft laugh from behind him. Even after everything, that laugh sent a warm feeling unfurling in his chest. “That was impressive.”

He knew a brief moment of disappointment, that even after everything he’d done Stanton was more interested in chasing skirts than seeing him, but he squashed it as he started to step away. “She was, I suppose.”

But Stanton, shockingly, didn’t let him move away and immediately hide his head in the sand again. Instead he reached out, caught his wrist in a firm grip and spun him around to face him. He looked more beautiful than ever in the moonlight, his golden curls ruffled and the robe that’d been hastily slung around him falling ever so temptingly off his bare shoulders. “I wasn’t talking about her, Aelred, I was talking about you.”

His breath caught in his lungs, but it was a pleasant kind of catch. He beamed up at Stanton, too tired to hold himself back any longer, and Stanton beamed down at him just as fondly. The moment was perfect, warm and inanimate and yet again only a breath away from a kiss.

“Well,” Godith was the one to interrupt them this time. They startled apart again, but this time nowhere near as violently. “That was even easier than expected!”

“I suppose you could say that, given that you were the one who just made a mutually beneficial deal with a terrifying supernatural force,” he said crisply, and only narrowly avoided getting distracted by the fond look on Stanton’s face at such iciness. “Are you going to be alright?”

“Because of the blood tilling thing?” Godith asked, also grinning; although he was pretty sure that was from the adrenaline of the situation, as opposed to any particular fondness for his spikiness. “It’s an old wording, easily worked around if you have the mind to do so. To be perfectly honest, I’m more worried about the whole descendants thing.”

It had been a long night, and maybe he was running a little high on adrenaline himsel. He found himself stepping closer to Stanton without thinking, wrapping a possessive arm around his waist as he scowled at her.

“I didn’t mean that!” Godith protested, and laughed for perhaps the first time in their acquaintance. She looked a lot lighter when she laughed, and he was somewhat surprised to realize that somewhere in all this terrible drama he had started to regard her as a friend. “I meant more that I have rather the same problem as you, just in a slightly different direction.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Stanton said, and when he glanced briefly up at his face there was also a certain amount of amusement there at his possessiveness. “You mean that you prefer…?”

“I can’t say that I understand the appeal of the female form, but I guess I can understand your meaning,” he said softly, allowing himself the briefest blush at his absurdity. He still didn’t remove his arm from around Stanton’s waist, though, kept clutching him close as he finally allowed himself to accept that maybe simple happiness wasn’t a sin after all. “I don’t entirely consider it a problem, though.”

“There we go,” Godith said, sounding decidedly pleased as Stanton drew in a deep - and faintly awed sounding - breath at his side. “I’ll head back to the farm now, plan what on earth I’m going to say to my father in the morning. Feel free to linger here a while, or come back to your room whenever you wish. You’ll have privacy either way.”

And with that, and not a single word further, she turned on her heel with a businesslike nod and left. He watched her go for a long moment, dwelling on the surprisingly warm feeling of friendship in his chest. And then slowly, tentative and hopeful all at once, glanced back to where Stanton was still standing loosely in his arms.

Stanton was already looking back at him, an expression of impossible tenderness upon his face. “Not entirely a problem, eh?”

“I’m still not sure that it’s entirely as simple as that. I’m still struggling a fair bit with the idea that it’s a sin, and will probably do so for some time to come…” He took in a deep breath, decided to finally stop quantifying his happiness and finally start reaching for it instead. “But no, not when there are far bigger things to worry about. Such as the fae - the actual _fae_ \- almost taking one of the best men I’ve ever met away from me.”

“You really saved me from them,” Stanton marvelled, sounding amply appreciative of his daring, and finally released his wrist; only to raise his hand, and lift it to ever so tenderly cup his jaw again. “Aelred Barling, a man who refuses to hold a sword but who will happily face down a fae queen with his teeth bared.”

“Really, Hugo. What else was I supposed to do given the situation?” He asked, not quite as sharply as he intended. He found himself terribly distracted; by Stanton’s warm hand on his face, by Stanton’s breath ghosting across his lips, by Stanton’s tempting nudity barely hidden by his cloak. To think, that a man as truly stunning as him wanted a single part of him…

But Stanton obviously did want a part of him, and more besides. He rested his free hand on his hip, and tugged him in even further until their bodies - his still largely clothed and Stanton’s still largely bare - were pressed together. “And I’m really _yours_ , huh?”

“Yes,” he said, a touch breathless in the face of all of Stanton’s concentrated beauty. A touch breathless, and more than a touch overjoyed at that feeling. “Just as surely as I’m yours, and will be for as long as I live… You know, if you’re okay with that.”

“I’ve never been more okay with anything in my life,” Stanton said, his voice impossibly warm, and finally laced his hands into the hair of his tonsure to bring him in for a kiss.

It wasn’t quite the first kiss he’d imagined between them, Stanton naked and dripping wet and him ruffled up and still high on adrenaline and the both of them still trembling from the revelation of the fae… But Stanton’s mouth was soft against his, and Stanton’s tongue was talented and eager, and Stanton’s body was impossibly warm and impossibly firm and impossibly hard. And so it was all perfect, more than perfect in the very best of ways.


End file.
